You Are When You Eat: The 8-Hour Diet Insanely Encourages Eating Only Between 9-5pm

David Zinczenko the ~~chief yahoo~~ Editor in Chief at Men’s Health has written new weight loss manifesto The 8-Hour Diet: Watch the Pounds Disappear Without Watching What You Eat!, argue that eating around the clock is responsible for the country’s high rates of diabetes and obesity. Their solution? Eat between 9am-5pm. What a~~n impossible~~ fun challenge!

I don’t know if this is more or less ridiculous than any of the other ridiculous diets out there, there’s just something so… lazy about it. Not about the actual doing of the diet — that sounds really fucking hard — but about the idea. It reminds me of the You Gotta Get a Gimmick from Gypsy! Like, put on all the belles and whistles and distract yourself to success! Nobody will realize it’s snake oil because it has a catchy title and a 4-Hour Work Week simplicity to it.

I’m sure everyone from the casual weight watchers to desperate dieters will give this a go until they realize that eating between 9am-5pm means that they can’t enjoy meals with their families — no pre-work breakfast fun and no dinner table bonding. That’s what makes this diet so sad to me. One of the great things about life is breaking bread with friends and family… if you can’t have your happy hour treats with coworkers and chocolate chip pancakes with your kids, what’s the point of anything?

And please, spare me the “Food is not the focal point of friendship!” because I know it’s not, but it’s strange to go to dinner with your bff and not eat — and it’s unhealthy to make food a solitary activity that you must do by yourself because you eat at weirdo times. Food is delicious and wonderful, why would you restrict your access to it based on stingy hours as dictated by some dude who’s best known for editing a jack-off magazine. Next!